Waking up in the morning can be difficult, and no one knows that better than me. Not because I have difficulties waking promptly to my alarm, but due to witnessing what occurs every time my fiancée’s alarm goes off in the morning. For starters, she sets multiple alarms that go off in five minute intervals, which she snoozes several times over the course of 30+ minutes. Afterwards, she transitions to the second stage of her wake up routine, which includes sitting up in bed for several minutes with a look of severe pain on her face, which I imagine includes an internal monologue of her cursing the world. Eventually she stumbles out of bed and begins preparing for her day.

To say she’s the only person goes through such pains just to get out of bed is a bold face inaccuracy. Several people find themselves in a similar experience on a daily basis, while others go to far more extreme lengths. Perhaps what these individuals really need is a bit of motivation, which CARROT Alarm is more than happy to offer. (more…)

Recently, in a previous post, I talked about how I had been looking around for a good alarm clock app. I hated, and still do, those standard, cheap alarm clocks you can buy at the store. That’s when I decided to take a trip to the App Store and search for an iPhone alarm clock app that I could use.

In the process, I realized that there are literally over 100 alarm clock apps available, ranging from really good ones to ones that I left asking myself, “How in the world did Apple even let these guys in?” As I searched high and low for the right app that fit my needs, I found that there are a good group of apps that I liked, and, I thought I would share them with you. After the jump, I’ve got 25 alarm clock apps broken up into two categories: free and paid.

The iPhone’s Clock app is a great tool for quickly timing things like cooking an egg, chess turns, or steeping tea. When you want to keep track of longer periods of time, or save commonly used timers, however, Clock can’t help you. Cosmos Timer was developed to fill this gap, allowing you to quickly create timers for any length of time and save them for later use. Find out if Cosmos Timer can make keeping time easier after the jump!(more…)

Have you noticed that your iPad seems to have a few missing apps? For no apparent reason, the iPhone’s default offering is a bit more robust than that of the iPad.

Today we’ll seek to right this wrong by briefly looking at a few apps that you can use to fill the void on your iPad’s home screen. And since you should’ve gotten these apps free with your iPad anyway, we’ll make sure the replacements are free as well!(more…)

I’m not an insomniac. Not really. I just picked up an unfortunate habit in college of not getting to sleep until 3am, and I haven’t quite managed to get rid of it yet. Partly as a result, I’ve been wishing vaguely for a FitBit for some time now. $100 is a bit much to spend just to feel guilty for not exercising enough, though, so I haven’t acquired one yet.

Then a friend told me about Sleep Cycle, an app that claims to track your sleep patterns and wake you at the optimum moment in your sleep cycle, resulting in a more natural and restful awakening. At $.99, testing it was a no-brainer. Here’s what I found.